Thursday, April 19, 2007

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

YOUR GOLF IQ


Have you heard that inside the bony mass, hereafter referred to as the "skull", lives a 3 pound gray blob that resembles chewed up bubble gum & is wired with 100 billion neurons? Within this wad of bubble gum we can locate and identify the part that drives your golf swing. We could call it the mother board. We could call it anything we want or name it after our family mutt, Rover. In the interest of being politically correct and not offend anyone we should call it by its given name, not Phil, not Sam, not Ben, not Tiger but Cerebellum (some sort of Latin influence here). No need to haggle over whether this is a first or last name. Liberace is a complete name. Do you care if Tiger has a last name?

So we interview this Latin guy, Cerebellum. And we ask him what he would like to see us do differently to ___you know___to improve our golf game. Did you catch the key word? No? It was "DIFFERENTLY". We are told that...If we continue to do the same thing and expect different results___ that's a sign of insanity.

First, we notice that he is aggravated with us. Why? What the heck did we do so terribly wrong? For openers he sez we flood him with information that is 99.999% useless. (Remember, he is only responsible for the motor skill stuff and has no clue what to do with analytics and statistics). ..And he says, that's not the bad part! How so, we ask? He continues **If the information we've been dumping on him was simply of no value, neutral, and had no side effects....fine. But...Warning....it is not fine. Our golf health is at great risk!

You see, there are no gates, no blocks, no walls that prevent bad stuff, that grows bad habits, from passing into the sanctum of this incredible motor control mechanism. So complicated and sophisticated is this device that our top brainy scientists are not sure how this contraption works.

OK...we got off the subject.. . . . . How can we befriend this mechanism so it will work in our favor or favour if you prefer. Let's ask This Wizard of Golfdom. First, thing he implores, is that we stop throwing useless babble at it. Leave it alone. OZ informs us that since the golf swing only takes 2 seconds...It does NOT need a ANY MORE information than is absolutely necessary.

You see. . ..being a people pleazer, the Cerebellum grabs all we send it. Whoops! Here's the bad part. It doesn't know the difference between a good tip and a bad tip so it records everything and tries to apply every bit of information we toss it's way! .....To help us out?
What it really wishes we would do is STOP. Leave it the hell alone and let it work with the basics that have made great golfers great. So simple, just copy!

2 Seconds and the golf swing is history. The ball is gone...lands on the fairway or green or lake or out of bounds...but it's gone

We have the choice to follow our Cerebellum's advice and keep it simple, eschewing the nonsense the Golf Industry tries to shove down our throats for their profit...NOT OURS!.

OK, spill the beans Mr. C., What can we do to make a humongous difference in our golf? Elementary Watson, we need to have the correct back swing and follow through and in between these points we need to have a relatively still head which glues everything together. Done! When these factors exist, billions of neurons fire at the exact nano second and presto...look at that ball fly! Can you count? Only 3 Factors, Not 3 Zillion.

OR_______we can continue to ignore Mr. C's advice, continue to play lousy golf and make fools of ourselves for another season & another season. Your choice, Not mine!
"Anything else?" we ask before it's too late and our clubs end up in the lake? "Simple," the rear part of our brain dishes out. "Throw away your golf magazines, stop taking golf lessons, turn off the golf channel & and tell your well meaning golf buddies with their opinions on what you should do with your golf swing____ to go jump in the lake full of rusty golf clubs.